I know, I didn’t blog yesterday. Naughty Kristin. But I have a very good explanation for my lack of blogging.

You see, I didn’t have my iPad with me. And even if I had it, I was in a hotel room in St. Petersburg with my parents and I was desperately trying to fall asleep at my normal blogging time. (That sleeping thing didn’t work out so well for me last night. I am exhausted.)

Last night I saw Craig Ferguson live at the Palladium Theater in St. Pete. With my parents, my aunt, and a friend of hers. And since they are old people they couldn’t drive to and from St. Pete in one night. Heavens, no! They got hotel rooms in downtown St. Pete for the night. (Don’t misread. I appreciate that my parents let me crash in their hotel room. But I probably would’ve gotten more sleep if I’d driven home last night.)

The show itself was great. Josh Robert Thompson (better known as Geoff Peterson, gay robot skeleton extraordinaire) opened and was hilarious (also, hot). Craig was also hilarious. I rarely stopped laughing during their sets,

Here’s an interesting thing I learned last night: Craig Ferguson draws a weird crowd. I was a little surprised by how many old people were in the audience (but that may have something to do with the fact that the show was in the Land of Old People).

I guess I don’t really have much to say about last night’s comedy show beyond I enjoyed it. But what more really needs to said?

However, I do have two sports-related things to say. First, thank God the Chiefs finally lost (thank you, Peyton!). It’s not that I have anything against Andy Reid, but I was really sick of the Andy Reid is undefeated in his first year with the Chiefs narrative. As I told my dad Sunday night, I almost never root against Peyton, but I’d rarely rooted for him harder than I had during that game. Second, CHOOOCH!!! How did I not find out about the three-year deal the Phils signed with Chooch until just now? I mean, I know I’ve been off Facebook and email for two days (and Twitter for several weeks), but I should have felt it in the air (tonight). (Ha. That joke is funnier than the one I was going to make. Go me.) And yes, I know all of the reasons why giving Carlos Ruiz a three-year deal is a bad/risky idea. But I. Don’t. Care. He is Chooch and I love him and *Kermit flail* I am a fan, I get to be emotional and irrational. (The fact that Ruben Amaro displays those same characteristics when making personnel decisions for the team is a different story.)

I had one reason for watching the All-Star Game. One. I wanted to watch Carlos Ruiz play. So I really just can’t thank FOX enough for interviewing Derek Jeter during Chooch’s first career at-bat in an All-Star Game. And spending half of the at-bat only showing Jeter onscreen was just the cherry on top. And the other half of the at-bat was spent in a split-screen so that my eyes were never denied Jeter.

This is why I hate national sports coverage.

At least Joe Buck and Tim McCarver have been nothing but complimentary of Chooch’s work behind the plate. (And it pains me to say anything nice about them.)

And this was one of those boring days where nothing inspired me to write, so you get me blabbing on about Chase Utley some more.

He went 2-for-5 with a home run for the AAA Lehigh Valley IronPigs. And if all goes according to plan he will be back in red pinstripes tomorrow! *Kermit flail*

Needless to say, this is great freaking news 🙂

It’s almost as exciting as the shots of him doing fielding work at Citizens Bank Park yesterday. In a sleeveless t-shirt. Oh my God, his arms. Look, I’ve had a thing for Utley forever (dudes with dark hair and light eyes are kind of my type), but he’s even hotter now. Just sayin’.

Y’know, Utley was the reason I finally caved and bought MLB.tv last season. He was making his season debut, it was about a month before my birthday, it seemed like an awesome early birthday gift to myself. And it was.

Oh yeah, and the Phillies won as well! Chooch is on another tear. As of right now he leads all of baseball with a .361 batting average. And he’s still third in All-Star voting. That is downright shameful.

Of the going to work and getting paid variety. This is kind of hilarious to me.

I have an acquaintance-y friend who works in a temp agency. (I met her when she placed me in my first position here in Tampa.) She knows I’m focusing on grad school right now, but sometimes she’ll call me with a potential placement. This particular position is more administration than accounting, but the real selling point to me is that it’s part-time. It’s only 20 hours a week and it’ll be good to get out of my house and interact with other humans. And actually earning money won’t suck, either. There’s a very good chance that I’ll spend my entire salary on fun stuff. But I’ve been so good about money this year that I can’t really blame myself for splurging a bit. I just hope the splurging doesn’t involve a lot of meals in restaurants because my diet will not thank me for that.

In other news, please, I’m begging you, Cot for Choice. Or, if you prefer English, vote for Carlos “Chooch” Ruiz to be the starting catcher for the National League in the 2012 MLB All-Star Game. As of yesterday Chooch had moved up to third place in the voting, which is awesome, but he still trails Buster Posey and Yadier Molina and I don’t like either of them or their Phillies-eliminating, World Series-winning teams. And if you won’t vote to send a really deserving player to his first All-Star Game, would you do it for me? My birthday is next Friday and I will happily accept votes for Chooch in lieu of gifts. I don’t care who else you vote for, either, as long as you Vote for Chooch 🙂 I realize I’m harping about this a lot, but it would legitimately mean a lot to me, if only because of how much it would mean to Chooch.

I was going to beg you to Vote for Chooch yesterday, but there was so much other crap to talk about that I decided to hold off. It would’ve been weird to whine about last night’s game and then ask you to Vote for Chooch. So I didn’t 🙂

The new job starts on Monday, so I need to get serious about school. Which means I should be doing my homework now.

If you have a couple of minutes, would you be so kind as to vote Carlos Ruiz for the MLB All-Star Game? It would mean a lot to me. Just click here and scroll down to Catcher and select Carlos Ruiz. You can vote up to 25 times per email address (and you know you have more than one email address).

Don’t care about baseball? Awesome! That means I’m not asking you to vote for my favorite catcher over your favorite catcher 🙂 Your favorite team’s an AL team? Also awesome! I don’t care who else you vote for as long as you vote for Chooch for NL Catcher.

The early voting results were announced today and Chooch is in fourth (4th!!) place. That is effing criminal. I know that Chooch has never gotten the national recognition that he deserves, but this is ridiculous. He is having a career year and outperforming the three guys (Yadier Molina, Buster Posey, and Brian McCann) who have more votes.

I kinda blame the Phillies for Chooch’s anemic numbers. Instead of doing an all-out Vote for Chooch push, they’ve been doing a Vote for Phillies push. And that is just not doing them any favors. I mean, they put Ryan Howard and Chase Utley on the All-Star Game Ballot, which is wishful thinking at best. I got an email this afternoon that makes me think the team is going to rethink their All-Star Game strategy and go full-on Vote for Chooch, but that may just be wishful thinking on my part.

At least the local media guys and the other players are doing their part to convince people to Vote for Chooch. I saw a bunch of tweets after the results were announced (Freddy Galvis tweeted in English and Spanish). My favorite, though, is the below tweet from Ryan Howard imploring his followers to “cot for choice.” The best part is that, instead of deleting it and tweeting again, he just sent out a follow-up tweet about autocorrect 🙂 (Side note: some of the replies he got from the “cot for choice” tweet, which was clearly the work of autocorrect and also completely understandable, are just awful. People are really, very terrible. I don’t know how athletes manage to stay on social networks for more than 10 minutes.)

I don’t know what was more annoying tonight: MLB.tv’s perpetual freezing or Chris Wheeler’s perpetual fretting. It may actually be a draw because when it froze for the billionth time as Reed Johnson came to the plate in the ninth I realized that I didn’t care if it unfroze because I didn’t want to listen to Wheels whinge. So I did what I should have done much earlier and launched At Bat on my phone and listened to Franzke and LA call the final out. Much better.

For serious, who decided to pay Chris Wheeler to talk during televised baseball games? He’s annoying at the best of times and tonight (especially in the last few innings) wasn’t the best of times. The worst part about his constant doomsayer act is that I kinda think he enjoys when things go poorly. At least, that’s the vibe I got tonight. Y’know, it’s “oh, you think I’m crazy for refusing to feel confident about an 8-3 lead in the ninth inning, well look, runs are scoring, the lead is dwindling, who’s crazy now?” (By the by, the answer is Wheels. Wheels is crazy.)

Also, I really do blame Wheels for the way the ninth inning played out. You can’t put that much negativity and worry out into the universe and not expect the baseball gods to give you something to actually worry about.

It’s weird that I’ve written 200 words whining about Wheels considering that everything worked out in the end. The Phils won! They’re over .500 for the first time since Opening Day! Doc finally got a damn win! Chad Qualls stayed safely in the bullpen! (Can’t help it, sorry. I don’t think the Qualls-bashing will stop any time soon.) Most importantly of all, Chooch continued to be amazingly amazing! (If you’re so inclined, vote Carlos Ruiz for the All-Star Game.)

On the other hand, at least Wheels gave me something I felt like writing 200 words about. I hadn’t felt particularly inspired today.

I’m too tired to come up with anything to write about at length, so I present to you a list of things that made me happy today.

Fastnachts – Super awesome delicious donuts are headed my way! Well, my aunt sent them to my parents, but my mom promised to save me some. For those that don’t know, fastnachts are a German, pre-Lent food. My favorite part about being part Pennsylvania Dutch (in the Deutsch/German way, not the Amish way) is the fabulous food I grew up eating and fastnachts definitely fit that category. I think this will be the first time I’ve had fastnachts since moving to Florida. They’re kind of hard to find in stores down here, not that I’ve ever had a store-bought fastnacht that was anywhere near as good as the homemade ones from my family.

John Bolaris – He outdid himself today. The (as far as I can tell) still unemployed Bolaris got tired of just tweeting weather forecasts for the Delaware Valley and tweeted a forecast for Clearwater (see the green tweet in the below picture). I found that far funnier than it should’ve been and felt compelled to take the below screen cap of my iPhone.

Pitchers and Catchers – Or, as ZooWithRoy likes to say, Aces and Chooches. There’s nothing inherently exciting about pitchers and catchers reporting for Spring Training. But it is a tangible piece of evidence that baseball is coming back and to that I say, “hallelujah!”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – I finally watched Deathly Hallows Part I and will watch Part II just as soon as Netflix gets it to me. I don’t know why I turned into such a slacker where Potter movies are concerned (I didn’t see Half-Blood Prince in the theater either). And I’m still not convinced that they had to turn the book into two movies (although Deathly Hallows gets a pass when compared to Breaking Dawn, a 750-page novel in which nothing ever really happens, being turned into two movies), but I enjoyed the first part.

I could’ve sworn there were five things in my head, but I can’t seem to come up with the fifth one. Oh well.